Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Lisa

What I can keep from vacation (and what I can’t)

Our family spent last week in Florida, a throwback to the summer vacations of my youth. My parents bought a timeshare condo sometime in the late ’80s, I think, so week-long trips to Daytona Beach became a regular thing, often in summer, sometimes over spring break.

Until last week, it had been six years since I’d been there. Many more years since I’d been there with my parents and my brother. Reuniting in the place where we made so many family memories (more than a few of which I seem to have forgotten) was a gift and a treat, a memory in itself.

—

I have a complicated relationship with vacation. I love the idea of seeing new places and getting away from the daily duties of life. But I hate packing. And travel causes me some anxiety. (Let me tell you about the congested roads from Virginia Beach to Hilton Head. Relaxing in the car was not an option on our way there.) And as much as I enjoy getting away, I really like coming home. I’m the kind of person who would rather unpack and put everything back where it belongs. Schedules and routine are my friends.

I don’t have a lot of trouble leaving vacation behind. Occasionally I’ll entertain the thought of staying in a new place forever. (This is also known as “searching Zillow for beachfront homes to confirm that I don’t have a million dollars to buy them.”) But vacation isn’t reality. I know myself too well. I would find something to hate about whatever “paradise” I chose as home. I just can’t picture an eternal vacation.

—

As I’ve eased back into our regular life this week, I’ve thought about what I can keep from vacation, and not just the memories and souvenirs and pictures. (And sand. How is there still so much sand?)

Mornings, for example. In Florida, I tried to keep to my usual wake-up time between 6 and 6:30 a.m. I know. I was on vacation. I was supposed to sleep in. Too many days of sleeping in throws my whole day off, though, and it takes me a good hour to adjust after I crawl out of bed. I am not a morning person, but I know what works for my body and mind.

It’s not hard to get out of bed that early when you know the sun is just starting to peek over the horizon and you can watch the show from your balcony (or pull up a front row seat on the beach). I checked on the sunrise every morning as my coffee brewed or as I got ready to go for a run. (I had a mileage goal to complete for a fundraiser.)

I’m not sure this view would ever get old.

On the days I didn’t head to the beach for a tortuous exercise session in 100 percent humidity, I sat on the balcony with a book and my laptop and watched the world wake up. One morning, I witnessed a family preparing to leave for Disney. Most mornings, it was the usual crowd, though: half-clothed (in swimsuits or pajamas) vacationers stumbling out of their rooms toward the beach to watch the sun rise. Occasionally, I’d have to say “good morning” to a neighbor on their balcony. Never did I feel like I had to be fully clothed to start the day. At home, I tend to wait till I’ve had coffee and breakfast and a change of clothes before I wander outside. (I mean, what if the neighbors or a car speeding by saw me in my jammies? Shocking!)

The day after we returned home, though, I took this little piece of vacation with me. I wandered outside in my sleeping clothes to the garden to see how our vegetable babies fared in our absence. And I wondered why I give myself “acceptable hours” to use my front porch, my favorite place in our little rental. Why don’t I ever take my coffee and breakfast outside to greet the day like I did in Florida?

—

And speaking of this little rental …

We stayed in a condo in Florida. It’s a pretty simple setup. A bedroom. A bathroom. A long hallway. A small kitchen with the bare essentials. A small living space. A balcony. I rarely think of condos as spacious, but really, we had all we needed for the week: a place to sleep and a place to keep and prepare food; a shower, a toilet; a couple of options for relaxing at the beginning or the end of a day.

This condo in particular is designed for vacationers, and I often complain about the size of the kitchen. We like to cook a meal or two (or more) when we’re on vacation, but the kitchens aren’t stocked for home chefs. So, we make do with what we have, using our creativity to make up for what we lack in tools or pans.

There are condos in Florida and there are large homes in Florida and homes of in-between sizes. I often dream of having a large home, and I’m not exactly sure why. (I seriously just googled the address of a large home in our area to see if it was still for sale. It is. My dreams aren’t dead yet!) Even when I’m not dreaming of a large home, I’m wishing for more space. When we moved here five years ago, our kids sharing a room didn’t seem like a big deal, but now, their tiny bedroom is just not enough. Or so I believe. They spent all of vacation sharing a room without much complaint.

How much space do I really need? How much stuff do I really need? In Florida, my mindset was that the condo was a home base of sorts. It wasn’t for spending large amounts of time, although one afternoon, our party of seven gathered there for an hour or so after we got caught in the rain. Sure, we were using every available seat in the condo, but it’s one of my favorite memories from this vacation. We were on the go a lot, and honestly, all of Florida is like a communal back yard, so maybe it doesn’t work the same in a place where we actually have winter. But I’m looking at our space and our stuff differently.

What do I really need?

—

I’m not terribly adventurous. You might know this about me or you might not. I have my moments of brave spontaneity but these times are rare and they always cost me something emotionally (and sometimes physically). At home, I tend to stick to what’s safe and predictable and usual. The adventure can wait for another day because it’ll always be here, I think.

On vacation, though, it’s sometimes now or never.

Here is a partial list of what I experienced on vacation that I could have missed if I’d have insisted on sticking to what made me comfortable:

  • I went to two local farmers’ markets with my husband on day 1 because we wanted fresh local vegetables as part of our vacation diet. Yes, we also went to the grocery store, but a farmers’ market as a tourist felt weird to me. But we had a nice conversation with the couple selling vegetables at the first market and found a sweet deal on fresh corn at the other. (Not to mention the pineapple.)

    I snapped this as quickly as possible to prove we’d all been to the top then hightailed it back down with my son who said, “This is creepy.”

  • I climbed 200 steps to the top of a lighthouse, held my breath as I made a quick lap at the top, and went back down. And while waiting for the rest of my family to find us, I found an exhibit of Cuban rafts that had washed up in the area over the years.
  • I took a ferry across the river to a national park site and climbed a narrow ladder to the top of the fort.
  • I walked across a drawbridge in St. Augustine and then waited on the bridge as it raised and lowered to let a boat through.
  • I led my mom and daughter through the streets of St. Augustine to find an ice cream place while we waited for the men in our group to retrieve the car from the other side of the bridge. (It was maybe going to rain again.)
  • I ran on the beach by myself, with my husband, and with our daughter.
  • I tried boogie boarding with my kids. In the ocean. (Let’s talk about this huge achievement. The ocean awes and terrifies me.) I even let the fish nibble my toes a little as we stood watching the waves. (It is the weirdest feeling.)

And then there were the detours and side trips that added time to our vacation but also unforgettable memories.

On the way home, we needed to stop somewhere to eat our packed lunch. My husband suggested we drive into Savannah and eat at the park right in the heart of the city. It was a Saturday and I immediately thought of all the reasons not to: parking and people, chief among them. Staying on the Interstate, stopping at a crowded rest area made more sense to me, but sometimes the call of the natural world is so persistent, I cannot ignore it. We found parking on a side street right next to Forsyth Park (and parking, it turned out, was free).

Not a bad “rest” area

We lugged our picnic lunch into the park, which was full of people but also trees draped with Spanish moss. We met a man who wanted to sing for us, and we saw an owl and two hawks in the trees. We got back in the car refreshed and traveled some back roads to return to the interstate.

Our destination on day one of the return trip was Hillsborough, North Carolina, where some friends of ours live. (This is a longish part of the story. Bear with me.) The first surprise there was the uniqueness of their home. It’s an old historical house that sometimes gets mistaken for being open to the public. This was where we would spend the night. (What was not a surprise was how welcomed we were. Our friends are hospitable hosts. When I’d originally started planning, I figured we’d end up in a hotel. Staying with friends is a thousand times better.)

When the kids started to get rowdy after dinner, our friends took us on a walking tour of their town. At one point, my friend commented on a house we were walking by and said it belonged to Allan Gurganus. “He’s an author,” she said, and I wondered if I should know that name. She mentioned that Hillsborough has a lot of writers living there. I asked what this man had written. She said his most famous book was “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” and I exclaimed because I’d heard of that but never read it. (Writer and reader friends, this is where you may feel free to disown me, although how can I possibly keep up with all the writers and books everywhere?!)

My spine tingled a little as we passed his house and I kept thinking about what she’d said about all the writers who lived in this beautiful little town. We finished our pleasant walk at the park where the kids chased fireflies and a frisbee (which eventually ended up in a tree), and we took the river path back to their house. Our kids fell asleep in all corners of the house and it was such a restful way to end a day of driving. The next morning, over coffee, the authors of Hillsborough thing was mentioned again, so I searched the Internet to see who else might be living nearby. Only one other name stood out to me, and I nearly dropped my coffee mug.

“Phil!” I exclaimed to my husband. “Annie Dillard lives here!” Granted, I have only read one of Dillard’s books but she is so well-respected among the writers I know that our house contains many of her books that I have every intention of reading. She is a poetic, spiritual, artistic voice, and I WALKED THE SAME STREETS SHE WALKS. (Sorry for the shouting.) This was the second surprise of our side trip, something I wasn’t even aware could possibly happen. Never mind that I wouldn’t know Annie Dillard if I bumped into her on the street, but just the thought of such a talent being nearby sent me into a fangirl frenzy I clearly have not quite recovered from.

We left our friends that morning a little bit unsure of where we would go next. We wanted to visit another national park on our way home, but we had trouble deciding which one. We finally decided to drive toward the Blue Ridge Parkway. It wasn’t exactly “on the way” but it wasn’t necessarily out of the way either. Our route took us on backroads through North Carolina and Virginia. The mountains loomed larger on the horizon. We stopped for lunch and then found our way to the first visitor center. We only planned to drive the Parkway for 20 miles or so, yet it added hours to our return trip.

But it added depth to my soul. (I can’t speak for the others in my family.) At the gift shop where we bought our souvenir puzzle (we have a collection from most of our adventures), my husband handed me a magnet with the well-known words from John Muir: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

“I saw this and thought of you,” he said with a smile.

It is true. Something happens to me in the mountains. I feel more like me. Those added side minutes on the parkway made the rest of the drive bearable and worth it. The views left us in awe, and my husband got to try out a driving feature on our new-to-us car as we wound our way up and down and around the mountains.

I can’t even with this picture. It’s like a painting.

It was nearly dark by the time we arrived back at our house, and we all pretty much collapsed into bed. We could have arrived hours earlier if we hadn’t gone to the mountains. We could have been home almost a day before if we hadn’t stopped to see our friends.

I regret neither of those decisions and I will continue to remind myself post-vacation that the fastest most direct way is not always the best way. I will try to keep my eyes open for surprises and take a risk now and then on something new and different.

—

Vacation is good but it’s not forever. At least, it’s not for me. Maybe there are some who could turn an endless vacation into their real life, but I can’t do it. I have to get back to the ordinary stuff of life.

Vacation also isn’t perfect. I could write another entire blog post about all the things that didn’t go as planned during the week. There was something every single day that kept my expectations from soaring too high. But this, too, I can keep after vacation is over.

Life is good, but it’s not forever, so seize the now-or-never opportunities. And life isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable.

We don’t bring home a lot of souvenirs from vacation–pictures, puzzles, postcards, a small gift for each of the kids–but the lessons and the memories will last from now until the next time.

And, I hope, beyond.

How does my garden grow? How do I?

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden lately. We’ve had some warm days and the weeds are keeping pace with the plants, so I’m in a rhythm of watering and weeding to give our vegetables the best chance at bearing the goodness they’re meant to bear.

Every other night, depending on the weather forecast, I drag the hoses across the driveway and the lawn to hook up the sprinkler and let the water soak into the soil for thirty minutes to an hour. One night, the wind was blowing such that the position of the sprinkler meant none of the water was actually staying in the garden. I made a small adjustment and the garden got its drink for the night.

I have no real plan for the weeding. I don’t exactly enjoy it, but our summer days so far have given me time to do what needs doing and some days I take to the garden with weeding tools under the hot afternoon sun to at least clear space around the plants. I’ve not yet been able to rid the whole garden of the unwanted greens.

I weed because I know the plants will benefit. They will get the nutrients they need to flourish. 

The fruit will be worth all the work.

—

Spiritually speaking, my garden is kind of a mess these days. (And by “these days” I mean “for a couple of years.”)

I neglected the tending work of my soul and a whole host of weeds sprung up, threatening to choke the fruit-bearing life right out of me.

It’s been a slow process, the untangling and uprooting of weeds I either didn’t know were weeds or chose not to see, and it’s not anywhere near finished.

Photo by Kyle Ellefson on Unsplash

But for the first time in years, I can see/feel/taste fruit. My life feels vibrant and rich, as if my soul is deeply rooted and reaching for the sun, a mystery I cannot fully explain.

It is not unlike the actual garden in my backyard.

I have long considered myself a black thumb when it comes to growing things, but the truth is our vegetable garden has produced a modest crop of goodness for several years now, and I’ve managed to keep half a dozen or more plants alive in pots on the porch.

The thing about gardening is there is work I can do and work I cannot do, and I’m still learning the difference.

Here’s how it worked with the literal garden: We made a list in our minds of what plants we wanted to buy from the garden shop. As a family, we picked them out and added a few more, paid for them and brought them home. My husband wrestled a borrowed beast of a tiller through several passes of the garden plot to prepare the soil, then we laid out a plan for where we would plant each vegetable, dug holes and transplanted each one into its own little space in the garden. We watered. We weeded. We waited.

Spiritually, it is somewhat the same. There is talk amongst people of faith of “planting seeds” in others’ lives, and I know that to be true in my own. I could list a dozen instances where someone shared their God-knowledge and Spirit-life with me and something of theirs settled deep into my soul.

Those seeds need water and tending, just like the ones in my garden, and often I wonder if there isn’t some transplanted faith that gets shared, too. Maybe it isn’t always seeds at the start. 

Photo by Eco Warrior Princess on Unsplash

And the weeds—they’re present in my soul, too and without some intentional tending, they can choke out any of the good that might be growing. 

I’m not going to try to name the weeds in my life here because I think we all have different ones. Maybe they have names like pride and envy and insecurity but maybe they have other names I don’t know. 

And maybe my weeds are not the same as your weeds.

—

I have started thinking of myself as a caretaker of sorts. When my kids were little and being a stay-at-home mom was sucking the life out of me, I would have resisted such a label, but it’s a word that seems to fit me more and more.

It struck me as I watered the potted plants on the porch one day. Usually, it takes me about three refills of my small watering can to make sure all of them get enough to drink. I have marveled at their growth while they sit on my porch and I do almost nothing to ensure they grow: I water them and pick the herbs. The flowers just are.

Someone else started these plants on the path to life. We brought them into our care and now I get to nurture and encourage their growth while also seeing them thrive and become what they are meant to become. That includes ripping out the weeds that threaten their growth. When it’s time to harvest, we share the bounty with others. And at the end of the growing season, my relationship with the plants ends. Until the next time.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it’s how I feel about the people entrusted to my care. 

I used to feel a lot of shame that I’m not the best at staying in touch with people (even family) who don’t live in the same state as we do. I’ve tried to give energy to things like Christmas cards to everyone I know and birthday cards to family but it drains me. And it’s not that I don’t care about those people or those events, but I just don’t think it’s what I’m meant to do.

Unless I can see you in person on a regular basis. I have started to recognize that presence is one of my gifts to the world and when I’m willing to pay attention, it leads me to the care-taking of the friends and souls around me. I cannot have a large garden of plants and I cannot have a large circle of souls in my care but I can choose a few to “adopt” and give them water and love and encouragement.

Sometimes, that also means weeding. It’s tricky with the souls in my care to identify the weeds and encourage their removal. Especially since I still have so many of my own. But it’s a key to growth and becoming the whole person each of us is meant to be. It’s messy and hard but totally worth it.

I speak against the weeds as often as I can, but it’s not always welcome. I wonder if the plants in my garden would groan if they could as I hack away at the unwanted growth. Would the rose bushes cry out when we prune the dead branches? It is not easy to convince someone that a little pain, a little discomfort, a little hard work will mean future growth.

Still, I do what I can.

—

This is a message for me, too, and please don’t think I do any of it well or perfectly.

This is what I know: Something will thrive in the garden, either weeds or fruit-bearing plants, and it is the same with our souls. Either we will bear fruit or we will allow weeds to overtake the garden or maybe somewhere in between, but just as a garden needs weeding, so do our souls need tending and we cannot always do it alone.

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

We need caretakers and we need to take care and we need to be willing to pull the weeds and have them pulled if we’re to fulfill our purpose on this earth. (Do you know yours? That’s what makes the weeding bearable.)

The garden is growing and so am I. 

It is hard and mysterious work.